Stop the slaughter and capture of wild dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

The dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan is extremely brutal and the dolphins suffer a lot of pain and terror before they are killed or captured for the aquarium industry. However, the hunt is extremely lucrative, mainly via the aquarium industry's support for live capture. This means that the hunters need to have a viable financial alternative to the dolphin slaughter and capture. Taiji, and surrounds, are a beautiful potential tourist destination with conditions ideal for diving (good visibility, calm waters, range of marine species, reefs), site-seeing (historic temples, mountain views) and wildlife watching (whales, false killer whales, striped dolphins, Risso dolphins, pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins to name a few species). It is important that we express our interest in potential tourism for Taiji as a viable financial (and humane) opportunity to replace the dolphin hunt as the town's primary means of income. The dolphin hunters are ideally positioned to offer wild dolphin and whale tours, as they are so familiar with their migration and location patterns. There is also a strong existing infrastructure (boats, whale insignia, whaling history), that could be tweaked slightly to be much more attractive to local and international visitors, with a focus on the wild dolphin experience, rather than captive dolphins in aquariums.

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The dolphin hunters of Taiji, Japan: Stop the slaughter and capture of wild dolphins in Taiji, Japan.